Three Novel Health Care Innovations

Paul Hsieh
, ContributorI cover health care and economics from a free-market perspective.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

I love medical innovations. During my 25-year career as a radiologist, I’ve seen enormous advances in the medical imaging, including powerful new techniques to detect early breast cancer, diagnose (and help guide treatment) of strokes before permanent brain damage, and detect early heart disease.

In this column, I’d like to highlight three promising innovations that could improve health care in coming years.

AEDs are portable devices that deliver life-saving electric shocks to patients suffering from heart rhythm problems, and are designed to be used by members of the general public. AEDs are now commonplace in schools, airport terminals, and other public venues. But if someone has a cardiac arrest in a remote area away from an AED, it can take several minutes before an ambulance arrives with defibrillation equipment. Hence, the interest in faster delivery of AEDs.

The time it took to get the drone dispatched, launched and to the site of a cardiac arrest ranged from a low of 1 minute, 15 seconds to a high of 11 minutes, 51 seconds. Ambulances had taken between 5 minutes and 38 minutes to respond to calls at the same locations.

For the drones, the median time from dispatch to arrival was 5 minutes, 21 seconds. For ambulances, it was 22 minutes. Thus, the median amount of time saved by drones was 16 minutes, 39 seconds.

For patients suffering cardiac arrest, 16 minutes saved could easily mean the difference between life and death.